Accompanying these recollections of my travel year 1985 are some of the songs I kept hearing while on the road. This video features an actual library, otherwise known as the place where I hung out for months prior to travel, researching the trip.
Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ‘85, Ch. 13: Introductions to Oslo, Bergen, Stockholm and Uppsala.
In this passage from Germania, Tacitus ((c. 55-120) was not speaking of youthful backpackers in Europe: “The Fenni live in astonishing barbarism and disgusting misery: no arms, no horses, no household; wild plants for their food, skins for their clothing, the ground for their beds.”
However, one might reasonably guess that the learned Roman’s passage explains why many non-Finnish speakers refer to the Suomalaiset people (as they call themselves) as Finns, and this is partially correct, although the Fenni referenced here probably were the Sami, natives of the Arctic region, later to become known as Lapps, which may be a mild pejorative in the fashion of Canucks, and anyway, there are many more of the Sami in Svenska (Sweden) that Suomi (Finland).
Concurrently, Finnish is fiendishly bizarre to non-natives. It is derived from the Uralic family of languages, entirely removed from Slavic or Germanic tongues.
English: My hovercraft is full of eels.
Finnish: Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita.
Hence my advice to native English speakers: Please stop and give thanks that so many others on the planet learn our language. For their willingness to absorb English in sufficient measure to help tourists like me (and you), we collectively owe the Finns a beer, a hug, and maybe a round of mustamakkara.
More about that particular delicacy in a moment.
On July 29, 1985, the overnight ferry from Stockholm docked in Turku, Finland. Immediately upon debarking, I presented my passport to the uniformed man and received yet another national entry stamp, stamped straight and level, neatly contained within the delineated box. With every degree of latitude traveling north, greater attention was given to orderly detail, or at least it seemed so.
The drill, now familiar, began anew: Lodging, eating, drinking and learning. What did I know about Finland at this embryonic stage of my global awareness?
Well, I knew that Finland’s...Read more
